If you had any sense you'd notice that the "virus" in question was written by anti-virus people as a way to demonstrate a vulnerability of the w64 platform.
This is somewhat of a slippery slope for anti-virus companies. On one hand, they need these viruses to exist. It doesn't matter that these are released into the wild or not, as they can claim that their product protects you against *ALL* these dangerous viruses; using this to scare customers to protect their sorry, unprotected PCs. On the other hand, in order to protect their customers from these dangersous vermin, they need to understand how viruses work, so they are able to create viri in their labs. Kinda like the argument that a good security admin needs to be a good hacker, in order to fully understand how systems can be compromised, and take measures to ensure it doesn't happen (or make it damn tough to happen). But do you trust them enough?
Now, with this being a company, its in their best interest (to aviod a legal backlash) to *not* release these viri. But that's not to say that some employee with a mission, isn't going to take that lab virus and decide to set it loose. But either hand you look at, they have a a nice little money circle: they protect against viruses that others create, they create viruses in order to understand them so they can protect against more in the future, they proctect against the viruses that they create, and the circle continues.
Do you find road car crash tests equally repugnant?
Bad analogy there. In this case -- unless you're a real comspiracy theorist -- the crash test companies don't have the capacity to release a horde of cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs on the road, that are hell-bent on crashing into unsuspecting motorists. And that they are only crash testing the vechicles in order to better protect the other motorists that could be hit by their wild lab cars by urging the car manufacturers to build better cars.
Answer: do anything you can to keep the case in limbo - including filing another lawsuit and using that as an excuse to delay proceedings.
However, looking at the date of when the suit was filed, it is dated January 20, 2004... they were supposed to hand-over the code that "SCO owns" and code that was improperly included into Linux by IBM with specificity to the court by January 13, a full week before that suit was filed against Novell.
There is no excuse (if they actually know what the hell they own code-wise) that they couldn't obey the court order, and supply the information that was requested of them. Didn't SCO say all along that they had proof of code misappropriations by IBM into Linux? SCO was supposed to satisfy interrogatories 1, 2, 4, 12, and 13, which are [1]:
INTERROGATORY NO. 1: seeks specific identification of all alleged trade secrets and confidential or proprietary information that SCO alleges IBM misappropriated or misused. This information is requested by product, file and line of code.
INTERROGATORY NO. 2: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 2 seeks further identification of: (a) all persons who have or had rights to the same; (b) the nature and sources of SCO's rights in the same; and (c) efforts to maintain secrecy or confidentiality of the same.
INTERROGATORY NO. 4: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 4 seeks information regarding each instance in which plaintiff alleges that IBM misappropriated or misused the same. In particular, this interrogatory seeks (a) the date of the alleged misuse or misappropriation; (b) the persons involved; c) the manner of misuse or misappropriation; and (d) the location of any method or code in any IBM product, Linux, open source or the public domain.
INTERROGATORY NO. 12: Please identify, with specificity (by file and line of code), (a) all source code and other material in Linux (including but not limited to the Linux kernel, any Linux operating sytem and any Linux distribution) to which plaintiff has rights; and (b) the nature of plaintiff's rights, including but not limited to whether and how the code or other material derives from UNIX.
INTERROGATORY NO. 13: For each line of code and other materials identified in response to Interrogatory No. 12, please state whether (a) IBM has infringed plaintiff's rights, and for any rights IBM is alleged to have infringed, describe in detail how IBM is alleged to have infringed plaintiff's rights; and (b) whether plaintiff has ever distributed code or other material or otherwise made it available to the public, as part of a Linux distribution or otherwise, and, if so, the circumstances under which it was distributed or otherwise made available, including but not limited to the product(s) in which it was distributed or made available, and the terms under which is was distributed or made available (such as under the GPL or any other license).
[1] The above Interrogatories were taken from Groklaw
SCO knew all along, before the court date in December, that Novell was contesting the ownership of SVRX. This may be why Novell only filed copyright and not a suit against SCO, since they probably didn't want to ruin any chance of SCO being squashed in the January 23 hearing.
Either way, the Judge better hand SCO's ass to themselves for their conduct in this case, especially the dribble of an excuse that was given for not complying with the cort order. Hell, just throw the suit out of the window, and let SCO battle it out with Novell.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, with this being a company, its in their best interest (to aviod a legal backlash) to *not* release these viri. But that's not to say that some employee with a mission, isn't going to take that lab virus and decide to set it loose. But either hand you look at, they have a a nice little money circle: they protect against viruses that others create, they create viruses in order to understand them so they can protect against more in the future, they proctect against the viruses that they create, and the circle continues.
Bad analogy there. In this case -- unless you're a real comspiracy theorist -- the crash test companies don't have the capacity to release a horde of cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs on the road, that are hell-bent on crashing into unsuspecting motorists. And that they are only crash testing the vechicles in order to better protect the other motorists that could be hit by their wild lab cars by urging the car manufacturers to build better cars.
Answer: do anything you can to keep the case in limbo - including filing another lawsuit and using that as an excuse to delay proceedings.
However, looking at the date of when the suit was filed, it is dated January 20, 2004... they were supposed to hand-over the code that "SCO owns" and code that was improperly included into Linux by IBM with specificity to the court by January 13, a full week before that suit was filed against Novell.
There is no excuse (if they actually know what the hell they own code-wise) that they couldn't obey the court order, and supply the information that was requested of them. Didn't SCO say all along that they had proof of code misappropriations by IBM into Linux? SCO was supposed to satisfy interrogatories 1, 2, 4, 12, and 13, which are [1]:
INTERROGATORY NO. 1: seeks specific identification of all alleged trade secrets and confidential or proprietary information that SCO alleges IBM misappropriated or misused. This information is requested by product, file and line of code.
INTERROGATORY NO. 2: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 2 seeks further identification of: (a) all persons who have or had rights to the same; (b) the nature and sources of SCO's rights in the same; and (c) efforts to maintain secrecy or confidentiality of the same.
INTERROGATORY NO. 4: For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, Interrogatory No. 4 seeks information regarding each instance in which plaintiff alleges that IBM misappropriated or misused the same. In particular, this interrogatory seeks (a) the date of the alleged misuse or misappropriation; (b) the persons involved; c) the manner of misuse or misappropriation; and (d) the location of any method or code in any IBM product, Linux, open source or the public domain.
INTERROGATORY NO. 12: Please identify, with specificity (by file and line of code), (a) all source code and other material in Linux (including but not limited to the Linux kernel, any Linux operating sytem and any Linux distribution) to which plaintiff has rights; and (b) the nature of plaintiff's rights, including but not limited to whether and how the code or other material derives from UNIX.
INTERROGATORY NO. 13: For each line of code and other materials identified in response to Interrogatory No. 12, please state whether (a) IBM has infringed plaintiff's rights, and for any rights IBM is alleged to have infringed, describe in detail how IBM is alleged to have infringed plaintiff's rights; and (b) whether plaintiff has ever distributed code or other material or otherwise made it available to the public, as part of a Linux distribution or otherwise, and, if so, the circumstances under which it was distributed or otherwise made available, including but not limited to the product(s) in which it was distributed or made available, and the terms under which is was distributed or made available (such as under the GPL or any other license).
[1] The above Interrogatories were taken from Groklaw
SCO knew all along, before the court date in December, that Novell was contesting the ownership of SVRX. This may be why Novell only filed copyright and not a suit against SCO, since they probably didn't want to ruin any chance of SCO being squashed in the January 23 hearing.
Either way, the Judge better hand SCO's ass to themselves for their conduct in this case, especially the dribble of an excuse that was given for not complying with the cort order. Hell, just throw the suit out of the window, and let SCO battle it out with Novell.